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Timothée Chalamet is like a light-hearted Robert Pattinson — much more than 'number one handsome boy,' he continues to display range much broader than his thin shoulders. Ever since he was 16, earning acclaim in the off-Broadway play The Talls, Chalamet has drawn the interest of numerous directors (and countless fangirls) for seeming totally comfortable inhabiting any role, from a French revolutionary in The French Dispatch to a spoiled piece of teenage detritus in Lady Bird.
Of course, it's Call Me by Your Name which truly launched Chalamet into the stratosphere of sexy stars. That film, directed by Luca Guadagnino, found Chalamet's character exploring his sexuality with an older man played by Armie Hammer, and became a landmark LGBTQ+ film of the 2010s. Five years and six degrees of separation later, Armie Hammer is understandably canceled for pursuing actual cannibalism and Chalamet is playing a cannibal in Guadagnino's new film Bones and All.
Luca Guadagnino Plots More Arthouse Horror
Bones and All follows two young drifters as they fall in love against the beautiful backdrop of Guadagnino's cinema, but this film is a far stretch from being a cannibalistic Call Me by Your Name (Eat Me by Your Name?) and undoubtedly has its own identity. It's a fascinating film that doesn't always work, having difficulty balancing its jarring tonal incongruities, but it's beautiful in its own way, an artistic twist on the now-overdone horror romance genre (Twilight, Warm Bodies, Vampire Academy, Vamprie Diaries, True Blood, and so on).
This continues the surprising turn toward horror that Guadagnino has taken, following his unexpected remake of Suspiria. This likely won't be permanent, as Guadagnino's next film is a sports comedy (Challengers, starring Zendaya), but it is an interesting detour that delivered this pair of gorgeous but sometimes awkward arthouse horror films. The filmmaker brings his typically expert eye to the United States for the first time, and captures the rundown beauty of small towns and the unkempt splendor of nature in his iconoclastically artful way (with help from cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan).
Bones and All is a road trip movie of sorts, following Maren Yearly (played by a heartbreaking Taylor Russell) as she wanders from town to town after being abandoned by her father. Her mother left when she was still a child because Maren likes to bite; more than that, she likes to chew and swallow. Even as a baby, she had a specific hunger, snapping at people, and her family had to leave town and change their names after one particularly awful incident. Maren is left alone when her father can't take it anymore, hopping on a bus to a different state where she meets another 'eater.'
Cannibals in Bones and All
Eaters can develop a strong sense of smell, so when Maren gets off the bus in a new town, Sully (Mark Rylance, perfect as always) smells her out and introduces himself. Sully is an older man, lanky and with a Southern drawl, and has enough knowledge to teach Maren about how to survive as a cannibal.
But Maren really explores herself once she meets Lee (Chalamet), a kind but troubled eater like herself who brings her along on his all-you-can-eat road trip. Chalamet is incredible here, inserting his typical sensitivity into a kind of 'white trash,' troubled youth character, hidden in baggy clothing and ripped jeans, his hair dyed a dirty magenta. Maren and Lee drive through the dust of back roads in his bright blue truck, one of the many primary colors that Guadagnino loves to use.
Together, they struggle with the traumas of their past and attempt to process their cannibal cravings, debating over how much guilt is actually warranted. They can't help how much they miss their families, still yearning for some kind of acceptance and validation in a world which is disgusted by them. This could be an allegory for many things, though it's a problematic one; it becomes uncomfortable at best (and offensive at worst) as soon as interpretations begin to correlate the cannibalism here with something else (queerness, depression, addiction).
However, if any reading comes close, it's probably a socioeconomic one. The film takes place in 1988 and surveys the financial consequences of Reaganomics across the 'real' America, as the protagonists squat in squalor and wander through infrastructure as broken as they are. They don't exactly want to eat people; they seem to need to eat people. If it signifies anything, Bones and All is a painfully sad look at the consequences of economic devastation, blurring the line between victim and perpetrator, eaten and eater.
Bones and All is a Gory Hard R
Regardless, nothing ever has to mean anything, and at its surface Bones and All is a haunting romance that's less about longing for loved ones than it is the yearning for love itself, for being accepted despite your flaws, bones and all. It's visually beautiful and has a great score as usual from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and is a road trip movie like few others.
That being said, its uniqueness isn't always coherent. The horror in this film is horrific — while not really played for jump scares or anything so standard, there's a banal cruelty to the violence and gore here that's truly unsettling. This isn't a PG-13 horror romance like Twilight, but rather a nauseating film that is both heartsick and literally sick.
It's often ambiguously filmed, though, with Guadagnino refusing to use typical horror tropes to indicate what an audience is supposed to feel. Depending on one's disposition, some of this could be morbidly funny (there were certainly chuckles at the New York Film Festival screening), considering how nonchalantly Bones and All approaches its disgusting images. The romance in the film could feel practically absurd, what with the dead bodies and faces splattered with blood, so some viewers simply won't take this seriously at all. It's a difficult tonal balance, a tightrope that Bones and All sometimes stumbles from, but some of that is dependent on the viewer.
Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell
If the viewer is coming for Chalamet, it's doubtful that his fans will wholeheartedly embrace the unnerving grotesqueries on display here, which is a shame because it just might be his best performance yet. He always has a charming sense of humor (seen more prominently in his voice acting in this year's Entergalactic), which he maintains even as a trailer trash cannibal, but he merges that element with the best of his romantic work and his ability to truly inhabit a tortured mindset.
Russell is great as well, playing Lee with a tenderness and palpable fear which makes her a soft curve against some of the harsher edges in everyone else's performances. She's quiet but quick to act, even if she's unsure of where that will lead, and Chalamet's character recognizes that sensibility. Together, they embody that aimless feeling of being lost, not having familial support or an economic foundation, lacking a place in the world and just wanting someone to accept you.
On dark days, people seem inherently unacceptable in this sad, violent world, where we all do things we regret. Our actions hurt others, and if we have a conscience, that pain hurts us too. Ultimately, Bones and All is about acceptance — how hard it is, how much we want it from others, and how little we give it to ourselves. It's a tricky movie, and it doesn't always work, but if audiences are willing to accept Guadagnino's film (bones and all), there is some nourishment to be found here.
Bones and All is a co-production of Frenesy Film Company, Per Capita Productions, The Apartment Pictures, Memo Films, 3 Marys Entertainment, Elafilm, and Tenderstories, and will be distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (via United Artists Releasing) in the U.S. and by Warner Bros. internationally on Nov. 18th.